Random snapshots of my life with three children

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When we moved into our house we rushed to paint the box room pink for our 18 month old daughter. It was pretty basic but it was fine for her. So when we found out we were expecting baby number 3 I was secretly hoping for a girl just to save on the DIY but fate had a think and went “nah lets give them some work to do!”.

Jax is 3 months old and not in his room yet but I wanted to get it ready for when he was. It felt like it was going on forever at the start – as you know the prep work is so laborious!

With the pink embossed flowery wallpaper on all walls we needed to strip it down and once we got on with it it wasn’t too bad. There were plenty of holes to fill in mind and once we had done that and added a couple of layers of damp seal to some areas it probably took about 10 evenings to get there (baring in mind I did most of it on my own at first as my husband decided I’d started so I would be finishing!).

All was going smoothly so to speak, until we came to wall on the side of the stairs. Late one evening we came to strip it and a massive chunk of plaster came away. Feeling the surface it almost bowed under pressure in some areas and we were scared to touch any more. Cut a long story short we attacked it one morning and managed to get off most of the paper and in some areas just left the lining paper from the top layer as protection. This wall was a mess and could have easily crumbled in our hands, requiring a full plastering and a lot of money. Thankfully we had a narrow escape, but this was the wallpaper underneath which was pretty cool as it was probably from the 40’s when the the house was first decorated!

With the prep done it was time for the fun part! I chose to paint 3 of the walls and have a wallpapered feature wall behind where the cot would go; I chose a brick wall. Now a few people have given me funny looks or gone “really?” when I tell them, but I really couldn’t be happier with it. It’s given it a neutral, contemporary feel and I love it!

Going with greys and whites I felt I needed some colour. I knew the bedding had a pop of red and yellow but I knew that would change. It was only when I went to a local shop and found a mint coloured money box which I thought was so cute, that I found a colour to add and also an animal theme.

All in all I think it’s a mix of themes with colour, animals and textures featuring but I really like it and I hope you do too!

Below is the finished nursery and I’ll add where things came from and approximate prices in case you want to do something similar 🙂

So this is the brick wall! The wallpaper had a lovely texture and grey tone to it- B&Q I want to say around £15 a roll (luckily we only needed 2!).

The bedding is Winnie the Pooh range from George at Asda and we had the quilt and bumper as a baby present and I bought the sheets and rug (see below, various prices).

The cot was my daughters, I want to say we bought it from Babies R Us but I can’t remember the name or the price now…

The paint on the other walls is B&Q colours – Grey Hints in silk and we had an offer of 2 for £20.

The elephant on the left at the back was from Home Sense £7.99 and the little baby one, which squeaks is Ikea around £2-3. There is a third elephant in the cot which you can’t see from this angle it is a plushy pyjama case and a gift for my older two but they don’t use it so I nabbed it for Jax’s room as it’s also grey and mint.

The rug

I bought the book shelves originally for the older kids room but that’s yet to be started so will now need to buy some more, oops! These are cool though – Ikea Mosslander picture ledges, can’t remember how much possibly around £8 each but don’t quote me! Most of the books were my daughters.

The elephant money box is what started the colour scheme! Home Sense around £7.99

The lantern I thought was really cute and a great colour match. The plant is plastic (who has time to water plants!) and the pot is actually supposed to be a hanging candle vase but who would know – oh yeah you now do! All from Ikea, can’t remember the prices or the unpronounceable Swedish names sorry!

The blind is also from Ikea and is cord free and black out! We were intending on adding curtains but somehow managed to pick up the brackets, the ends and leave the pole so they are yet to be mounted! I want to say the blind was around £15.

Love this wardrobe – Ikea £80! I nearly bought one that looked half as nice for £50 more! Can’t off the top of my head remember the name but it was in the kids rooms section of the show rooms.

On the left is the new carpet, as you can see the original matched the hall (right bottom corner) and was fine for rented property but we wanted him to be able to sit comfortably and read when hes a bit older so went for a thicker pile in a lovely contrast grey – local carpet shop 7×8 ft £120 with fitting.

The light, oh the light, I love this light and bought it months ago, in fact I had only just found out I was pregnant. It is so pretty! – You guessed it Ikea!

Now I read somewhere that pictures of family can help calm children so thought I’d have a little photo wall – trying to hang these all straight, most frustrating. thing. ever! The frames were from B&M pack of 3 for about £3 I want to say… The word art was done by moi although I nicked the tiny toes phrase off my baby album.

Now you know what I’m like I had to get some crafting in! So I bought an MDF letter J from Hobbycraft for £5 and then scratched my head as to what to do with it!

As you can see I decided to paint it but used one of the darker greys from the testers we bought as a contrast to the wall it would be on. And then added some of the wallpaper, cut out and glued on with Craft PVA also from Hobbycraft.

I did love this effect I really felt it stood out and pulled the wallpaper onto another wall.

My final project for this room was that I initially wanted to put some word art in the space by the wardrobe. Looking online I narrowed it down, but they were charging a fortune. So I replicated it on an app, printed it on photo paper and framed it myself. It’s not identical but I’m really happy with the result and I saved about £30! The frame was from Wilko for around £5.

I love this song and I sing it to him a lot so it was perfectly fitting!

So that is it (wow it would have been so much quicker if I did YouTube)! I hope if you have survived this seriously long blog that you have enjoyed the room and maybe even been inspired.

One month ago today I was sat cuddling my 3 day old son. How on earth is he one month old already. No seriously how? I feel like I blinked and it’s just happened. I just hope the rest of the time slows down!

So having three kids – not as bad as I thought it would be – yet… but I’ve found it hardest trying to split my time. I want to be able to play with the other two but it’s tricky with a newborn to look after. Housework is a military operation and uni work? Everytime I turn on my laptop he starts to cry.

He’s currently feeding every three hours on and off, although of that three hours he feeds for half an hour and then spends about an hour and a half being winded or not settling because of wind leaving me with about an hour to fit in three hours worth of work.

He is being awake for longer now which is lovely and I’m sure I’ve seen some ‘real’ smiles! He enjoys his swing most of the time and the other day we went to our first baby massage class. Never tried them before but he slept all the way through it so whether he enjoyed it or not – the verdict is still out.

I had forgotten how much I love my sleep, having to get up for school runs when you have been up in the night is so hard. But I wouldn’t change a thing he has made us a complete family and we love him to bits.

I hope the future is bright for our little man 🙂 our adventures are just starting!

I have a confession to make – I love buying baby things, who doesn’t? With our first child we couldn’t wait, in fact I think we bought most of the big things in one trip to BabiesRus on the same day as our 12 week scan! We were very keen and in hindsight really silly as it cost a lot of money buying everything brand new from a store.7 years later, 3rd child and I’ve learnt to be a bit more thrifty when it comes to purchasing those baby must haves. This time round I made a list and a few things were classed more in the luxury department, they weren’t essential to raising a baby and brand new were a bit out of our budget, but then I harnessed my best bargain hunting talents and with the aid of sites like eBay, Gumtree and the new Facebook Marketplace I managed to make some great little finds for more than half the price!

So here is a rundown of my favourite baby bargainsBuggies, prams, whatever you call them, have always been a big love of mine when buying baby things. When we had our first child I bought a really ugly one brand new and thought it was a good deal. Looking back it wasn’t, it just fit our budget and the ‘pretty’ ones were way too expensive. But these days there are so many people selling really stylish buggies in great condition for just a fraction of the price. This is the Mothercare Roam and it came with the Aqua colour pack. This in the shops was retailing around £295 plus £50 for the colour pack. This was for sale on eBay for £100 and it had been used for only 12 weeks. It was in excellent condition and even with the petrol money involved in collecting it, it still gave us a saving of £225!This is the ISOfix base for the Roam car seat. We never had ISOfix points in our cars 7 years ago so these have always seemed a bit of a treat. They make it so easy, just click and go. This is technically a cheat purchase as it was brand new however when I originally looked at them they were full price on the Mothercare website at £80. But as luck had it when I was ready to buy it had gone down to half price in the January sale giving us a saving of £40!The Chicco Next2Me has been a big hit with parents this year. They are a fairly new concept and they certainly didn’t have them 5 years ago when I had my daughter. But as with all new things they come with a price and sadly for us this was not in our budget when retailing at around £169. We had bypassed the idea completely and bought a Moses basket, even looking on eBay they were selling second hand at around £80. So it was a great surprise to be offered one by a friend for £50. I jumped at the chance to accept and we managed to resell the Moses basket for the same price we bought it. So we saved £119!

Now this is a Cosatto changing table (this is the design we have but not my actual) it’s nothing special, it’s probably quite an old model as well but this has made my list because it wasn’t something we were going to get, i was just going to settle for a good old changing mat on the floor. But I left it to the last few weeks and in the end put a shout out on a local Facebook sale site. I kindly asked if anyone was selling a changing table and that I didn’t want to spend more than £15. We got a reply from someone local and they only wanted £5, saving £10 on our budget price and probably at least £50 on a brand new one!

A glider is a buy I would definitely recommend I never had one with my eldest but I had one (stupidly bought brand new) with my daughter and we sold it when we’d finished with it so of course third time around I needed to get another one. Now the one we had last time was around £130 new from Kiddicare. The one we bought this time is a Dutailier (similar to the one in the picture), I can’t see how much they retail for as it must be a couple of years old but we managed to find it on Gumtree for just £50. Some come with a footstool, this one didn’t, but I found I didn’t use it last time anyway. So even compared with the price of the Kiddicare chair we saved £80 on last time!

A swing was another item I could never afford the luxury of with my first two, but I always wish I had. When looking brand new though they were not coming up cheap, in fact this particular swing is retailing full price at £85 in Mothercare and this is why I love the new Marketplace on Facebook, we managed to bag this fabulous swing for just £30 and it was in excellent condition, saving £55!

The Perfect Prep is the last item on my list and I saved the best until last this is another new item to the parenting world since my daughter was born but oh my gosh why has it taken so long?! It is basically a Tassimo for baby bottles. Now we didn’t buy this until after he was born because I was hoping to be able to breast feed but when we went to bottles I knew we had to get one of these without a doubt and again, Facebook to the rescue. These machines are retailing at Asda for £120! Now I would definitely suggest watching the marketplace and not necessarily jumping for the first one you see. Some people are still trying to sell them second hand for £40, and sometimes they also need a new filter if the original owner hasn’t got one and these retail at around £10. We managed to keep an eye out and picked this up at an amazing £20! The filter was also put in in December so it has a good few months left, meaning we saved an incredible £100 on this baby buy!

So this completes my list of baby bargains which hopefully shows that you can have a budget and still get some of the top products in the market. If we had paid full price for these items we would have spent over £1000! But with just a bit of effort we managed to get them all for just £295! Now that’s what I call being able to have your cake and eat it 😊

Jaxon was finally born on Thursday 23rd February at 41 weeks and… I had a spontaneous labour! For those who don’t know this is a major win for me. After Rabbit and Roo both having to be induced, I had literally booked in just so I could focus on an end date. I didn’t actually expect to go into labour on my own and so when my waters broke it was quite a shock! (luckily I was in the lounge not the supermarket!)

The other headline is I got my home water birth YAY! I think hubby was starting to panic that we wouldn’t get to use the pool we hired. I very nearly didn’t, this labour was 3.5 hours from start to finish and it took so long to fill the pool, by the time it was ready I was already starting to push. Pretty much the same with ordering the gas and air, my lovely midwife really wasn’t ready for me to progress that quickly and I think if I hadn’t put my foot down when I did it may never have turned up before our little boy did. Looking back I did most of it without anything and so although it hurt like hell at the time, I’m now quite proud at getting through it.

He ended up weighing 9lb 1oz so he wasn’t exactly a small baby to give birth to! I was very lucky and got away without any tears and I even got my wish to get rid of the placenta naturally (the less injections the better I say) – it was huge! So it totally makes sense as to why I was so big this time round. If anything caught me by surprise it was the after pains. I don’t remember having them with Roo and I think that’s because I’ve read they get worse the more children you have. I now know that’s what they were when I had Rabbit. I was suddenly in a lot of pain after she was born and I panicked because I didn’t know what they were or to expect them, but also the midwives didn’t really help. They didn’t explain that it’s normal or try and calm me down so looking back it’s no wonder I freaked out. All I can explain them as is like a second wave of contractions – which makes sense as it is your uterus contracting back down, but my gosh, third child, they hurt as much as the labour!

He is already 10 days old and I can’t believe how easily he has fitted into our family, it’s like he has always been here. His brother and sister both adore him and although we are losing some sleep I think he is doing really well.

I am so over the moon and in love with our little Jax, I know that I won’t have anymore children and in that respect he really has made it feel like our family is complete. I am soaking up every ounce of the newborn stage because I know he will grow so fast.

xXx For all your new adventures my darling, I wish you luck, love and happiness xXx

Sorry I didn’t realise it had been that long since I last wrote. That means I have been off work four weeks this week and it’s gone quick. I wish I could say it had been an eventful four weeks but unfortunately not.

Excitingly this week marks our due date (on the 16th!) so currently as I write this I am 39 weeks and 6 days. Last time I wrote I said about having sweeps from 39+3 but the midwife I saw at 38 weeks (yet another one) said she wouldn’t recommend starting them until 40 weeks at the earliest. So I am still waiting and hoping it will get things going over the weekend.

I’ve read so many other mums in my February birth forum who have had their babies early or are having long periods of irregular contractions, that I am starting to feel left out. But I’m trying to stay positive, enjoy every minute I’m not in pain and just keep remembering that in another 4 weeks he will definitely be here as I can’t go far over 14 days before being induced. This is one thing we want to avoid not least because I hated it last time but also we’ve hired the pool which has to go back in two weeks if I have to be induced. 😦

In myself at the moment I am finding it increasingly uncomfortable to walk too far and even just picking the kids up from school, having driven half way there, feels like the baby is about to fall out at any moment. His kicks are so strong sometimes they really hurt. And sometimes I feel like my waters could go at any minute but alas they don’t.

I’m just keeping everything crossed (except my legs haha!) that the sweeps will be successful and we can have a little bundle delivered next week 🙂

Wow that has felt a long time coming, but somehow I can almost see a light at the end of the tunnel. In fact I’m starting to get excited this week as I imagine holding such a precious little bundle again. I’m sure I’m in denial about shitty nappies and sleepless nights but let the ignorance continue until it becomes inevitable that’s what I say.

So this week is week 28, only 14 left to go (yes I’m adding 2 for comfort as I went over with Rabbit and Roo). I’ve also sorted out mat leave this week so am now on a mental countdown to finishing work as well. Jelly bean has been kicking a lot this week which is reassuring but I’m sure he’s grown again as I feel about to burst some days and can’t fathom how he can get any bigger, he won’t fit!

The end of this week I am having my first growth scan, which is kind of exciting too because I’ve never had one this late before so it will be interesting to see if I can see any more detail than last time. I will be having those every four weeks until the end now, so the next one could be just before Christmas!

I got my GTT results or should I say I didn’t – get a phone call that is, so I’m assuming all is well so yay! Still keeping my fingers crossed as that is now one less obstacle between me and the home birth. I wrote a draft birth plan this week, and it was hard. I was trying not to talk about hospital but I know it could be out of my hands in the end either through complication or induction.

I still don’t know what to do about the pool hire. I watched a birth video by one of the Channel Mums this week and it really bought it back to me how much pain you can be in, so it’s in my mind that I don’t want to not get it and then really regret it on the day because the pain is too much. On the other hand I listened to the positive affirmations on my hypnobirthing app as I got into bed the other night and practised my deep breathing. I sent myself to sleep so they must help. I also felt really calm in the total darkness so I think the least light in the room during labour the better for me – don’t think hubby will let me lie in the bed though…

Last week we had our 21 week scan, I was really keen to make sure baby was doing well but as I’d started to feel movement I wasn’t half as nervous as the first time. Those little kicks certainly give some reassurance. I want to make the most of them this time as this baby will be my last and the kicks are always what I miss the most when I’ve given birth.

We were curious going into the scan to find out what we were expecting. Although I’d have liked a surprise this time, my husband really wanted to know and we thought it would give the kids time to adjust. I had felt all along it was a boy but everyone else seemed to be convinced it was a girl including my husband and parents. So it was exciting to find out who was correct.

Once we had found out I wanted to find a fun way to tell my Mum and Dad, I’d seen lots of extravagant ways of revealing gender but I wanted to keep it simple, they were expecting me to just text them I think.

I chose to take a picture of my bump with the gender written on using the BabyCentre app. I bought a card which said ‘Just to say’ which I thought was a cute introduction, and it was blank inside so I could add the picture. The card choice was amusing, completely by accident it had two flowers on the front which faded from blue to pink so it was a good way to keep them guessing!

I also wanted to show them the scan picture but I thought to make it fun I’d try and put it on the front of the envelope. I stuck it onto a piece of A4 paper using masking tape trying carefully not to push down to firmly and that there were no ends sticking up and after I emailed the picture to myself from my phone so I could pick it up on our PC I attempted to print onto the envelope, and it worked! (I did a dummy run to make sure the envelope would be in the right place) I was really chuffed with this it looked great.

I handed them the card later that day and the first thing my Dad said because he saw the blue on the card first was “it’s blue is that a sign?”, but my mum pointed out it also had pink on it!

Well it’s safe to say they were surprised, I would even say my mum was shocked. She now reckons she’s never got a gender prediction wrong yet, but I always knew I was right deep down :o)

She is still trying to tell me that she knows people who have been given a wrong opinion. I guess we won’t know for sure until he is born!

I’m glad we found out now, my daughter sadly didn’t take the news well and cried in her room for about half an hour straight (she’s 5). I think she’s coming around though and has gone back to kissing my bump at bed time :o)

I love being able to finally buy some clothes, unisex clothing is so boring!